Producer
Kitchel Family Organics
Contact: Lana Kitchel
Address: 25255 3rd Avenue Los Molinos, CA, 96055
County: Tehama
About Us
We have a small, family-owned, organic farm on 8 acres in Los Molinos, CA. We grow a wide variety of organic fruit, nuts and vegetables, including quite a few heirloom items.
We've never used any pesticides on any of our crops (all GMO-free, too, of course). We compost, apply copper to stone fruit trees periodically, and use worm castings, organic fertilizers, diatomaceous earth, Neem Oil, and Earth Juice products.
My husband John, who received his bachelor's degree in Horticulture in 1979 from CSUC Chico, owns Lassen Landscapes, a landscape design and installation business. He (the "green thumb" in the family) planted many fruit and nut trees and hundreds of ornamentals. (Also, there were existing trees of quite a few varieties when we purchased our home/property.) Additionally, we have a large summer garden, a smaller winter garden, a small table grape vineyard, various berry bushes, and a large strawberry patch. Our farm is a very small - solely family - operation: John does most of the planting and farm maintenance on weekends; I mostly weed, pick, process, market, and deliver.
We hand process all our produce 100%, including our nuts, using NO pesticides, herbicides, or chemicals! We ambient air dry our nuts, which are later hand shelled. Hand processing is much more labor intensive and far less profitable than commercially grown walnuts but these are definitely worth all the effort! We pay our Nut Shellers fair wages.
We also sun-dry our organic fruit (without sulfur or any additives), primarily peaches, nectarines, figs, pluots, plums, apricots, and tomatoes.
We've never used any pesticides on any of our crops (all GMO-free, too, of course). We compost, apply copper to stone fruit trees periodically, and use worm castings, organic fertilizers, diatomaceous earth, Neem Oil, and Earth Juice products.
My husband John, who received his bachelor's degree in Horticulture in 1979 from CSUC Chico, owns Lassen Landscapes, a landscape design and installation business. He (the "green thumb" in the family) planted many fruit and nut trees and hundreds of ornamentals. (Also, there were existing trees of quite a few varieties when we purchased our home/property.) Additionally, we have a large summer garden, a smaller winter garden, a small table grape vineyard, various berry bushes, and a large strawberry patch. Our farm is a very small - solely family - operation: John does most of the planting and farm maintenance on weekends; I mostly weed, pick, process, market, and deliver.
We hand process all our produce 100%, including our nuts, using NO pesticides, herbicides, or chemicals! We ambient air dry our nuts, which are later hand shelled. Hand processing is much more labor intensive and far less profitable than commercially grown walnuts but these are definitely worth all the effort! We pay our Nut Shellers fair wages.
We also sun-dry our organic fruit (without sulfur or any additives), primarily peaches, nectarines, figs, pluots, plums, apricots, and tomatoes.
Practices
We compost, apply copper to stone fruit trees periodically, and use worm castings, organic fertilizers, diatomaceous earth, Neem Oil, and Earth Juice products. We use the following Climate-Smart practices: Conservation Crop Rotation, Cover Cropping, Field Borders, Hedgerow Planting, Mulching, Nutrient Management, Residue and Tillage Management, Reduced Tilling, Riparian Herbaceous Cover, Riparian Forest Buffer, Tree/Shrub Establishment, and Windbreak/Shelterbelt Establishment and Renovation.